Tigard woman hits her stride in Greek ultramarathon

Stacey Bunton finishes second among women after running for 31 1/2 hours

Glenn Tachiyama/Special to The Oregonian Stacey Bunton of Tigard gives a thumbs up shortly after leaving Hellas, about 50 miles into the 153-mile Spartathlon in Greece. Bunton finished second among the 13 women who finished the race last month.

By Kathleen Masser, Special to The Oregonian

When Stacey Bunton first toyed with the idea of running the Spartathlon, an ultramarathon that follows the ancient route of the Grecian messenger Pheidippides, her goal was go the distance.

But as the event drew closer, the Tigard resident upped her ambitions. "I want to place," she said four months before the Sept. 26 race.

Not only did she place, Bunton ran the 153 miles in 31 hours, 26 minutes to finish second among women runners -- 83 minutes behind Korea's Sook-Hoe Hur -- and in 30th place overall. Of the 364 runners from 33 countries who started the race, only 154 finished, 13 of them women.

Bunton, 46, was one of two Americans to complete the course. The other was her coach and mentor, Scott Jurek, who won the event in 22:20, more than two hours ahead of the closest competitor. As she sprinted up the stairs leading to the finish, and in Spartathlon tradition kissed the statue of King Leonidas, she summed up: "That was hard."

For 30-plus miles, Bunton led the women, a feat that triggered her most memorable race moment.

"It was dark," she said, "and all of a sudden, there was a car right behind me with a little round, flashing ball on top, like a police car in a cartoon."

No one had mentioned that lead runners get a police escort announcing their arrival. That's when she realized she was the lead woman.

Her first thought? "I'd only been running for 13 hours. I still had a lot of race to go. I didn't want to be the lead woman. I woke up to the reality of the race."

The Spartathlon, launched in 1982, starts at the foot of the Acropolis and is based on Herodotus' description of the messenger who arrived in Sparta the day after he left Athens.

"The villages were pretty much a blur," said Bunton, who works as a quality engineer. "What I remember most is always being greeted by children, and townspeople on their porches yelling encouragement. At one aid station, the village women were waiting for us with homemade chicken soup."

Bunton encountered her biggest test on the Parthenio mountain, where, according to legend, Pheidippides met the god Pan.

"It was cold, with dense, wet fog," she said. "I left the aid station without enough clothes. When I got to the other side, my core temperature just plummeted. I was shaking and I slowed way down. I knew I'd made a mistake. It took me four hours to work through it. That's when I lost the lead."

Jeff Herd of Vancouver, Bunton's boyfriend and one-man support team, urged her on, saying, "You know how to do this. Do what you came here to do. I want to see that 12-minute mile."

"And my last 30 miles," Bunton said, "were 12-minute miles."

Bunton, who has been running for 28 years, was touched by the love and respect shown by the Greek people and her companions on the road.

"There was incredible camaraderie and tremendous mutual respect. There were people from so many countries and very few spoke anyone else's language. So you'd look at each other and you could feel if they were in pain or thirsty, or if they were having a good moment, all through body language and gesture."

She hopes to enter the race again next year.

"I'll use what I learned," she said, and not just the warm-clothes lesson. "My coach told me to use the police car to my advantage. It lights up the whole road."